Power Plants To Continue Spewing Pollution

AUSTIN¾ Air quality in Houston and many other major cities in Texas will get even worse if the Bush Administration succeeds in implementing a rollback of the U.S. Clean Air Act that it will formally propose

today. The Administration will announce its plan to weaken a key component of the Clean Air Act known as New Source Review. This would cripple a key facet of the law by creating loopholes that allow factories, including power plants and oil refineries, to spew more asthma-causing pollution.

"This is an assault on one of the cornerstones of the Clean Air Act," said Neil Carman, clean air program director for of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. "It looks like a payback to President Bush's high-roller friends in the oil, coal and utility industries who funded his campaign, and it comes at the expense of American families, especially children with asthma."

New Source Review is a vital Clean Air Act program that requires antiquated power plants and factories to install modern pollution-control equipment when they expand. The Administration's goal is to punch loopholes in the program, so that some old facilities will be able to increase pollution without installing modern pollution fighting technology.

"In many Texas cities, like Houston, Beaumont and Port Arthur, air pollution is already so bad that kids can't play outside during hot summer days without getting sick. But instead of helping kids breathe easy, President Bush is letting polluters off the hook," continued Carman. "This announcements puts the interests of big energy companies ahead of public health."

New Source Review has been instrumental in regulating refineries and power plants, which pump millions of tons of pollution into communities. Power plants built between 1940 and 1970 emit four to ten times more pollution than modern plants. One example is coal-fired power plants that emit sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide, and mercury. These pollutants have been found after repeated exposure to cause as much damage to human lungs as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

"The Clean Air Act is a life-saving law designed to protect American families from the air pollution spewed by dirty old industrial plants," said Carman. "It's a sad day for Texans when the Environmental Protection Agency is undoing more than thirty-years of work to clean up the air we breathe."

Many of the pollutants that would be allowed to continue unabated indefinitely if New Source Review is gutted are primary components of ground-level ozone, or smog. Houston suffered another bad air day on June 12th, its seventh one-hour ozone exceedance day for the year.